Act IV scene 4 is crucial in building up a picture of Hamlet as he is forced to leave to go to England having killed Plonius and offended Claudius. As he leaves, he meets the Norwegian army that is going to fight over some "scrap" of Polish territory. Hamlet compares the willingness of soldiers in this army to go and die for something that must mean so little to them and to act on an issue that has so little personal connection to them. Fortinbras, who is fighting over this land, is an example of somebody who is willing to act and respond when he has reason. This of course is the direct opposite of Hamlet, who has significant reason for action but who has failed to act because of his procrastination. Note what Hamlet says in his soliloquy at the end of this scene about this comparison:
How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep—while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain?
Fortinbras and the presence of his soldiers therefore stand as a sharp rebuke to Hamlet about his inaction and how he has failed to do anything about something that is so intimately connected with his identity and his family. The soldiers, and Fortinbras, are willing to risk their lives for "a fantasy and trick of fame," whereas Hamlet is not even willing to risk his life for the significant things he has suffered. Fortinbras becomes a symbol of action and responsibility whereas Hamlet sees himself as a symbol of inaction and lack of responsibility. His final words represent an effort to try and goad himself into action, as he asks that his thoughts may only be "bloody" from this point onward.
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